Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Yellow Rain

Transcript

Short Stuff: Yellow Rain · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and there's Josh over there, and this is short stuff.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Get up, Chuck. All right, We're gonna go to the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies. The Vietnam War is well over, well
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: for America at least, well that's true, um, But Vietnamese
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and Leotian people started noticing over there that periodically there
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: would be a sticky yellow rain um when it was
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: really sunny out coming down, and that this substance killed
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: plants and made people sick, especially among the among the Moongo,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: which is to say h m O n G, which
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: were people in Southeast Asia who fought with France against
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the Communists since the nineteen fifties. Yeah, they were mountain
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: people in north north Vietnam and in Laos. Yeah. I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: think they probably uh there, Oh, never mind, I was
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: about to discuss a deleted scene and apocalypse now, but
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we don't have time for that. Are they the ones
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that they dine with they have dinner with it? I
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: think so. I think there were French in the in Mong,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: but it would make sense because the Mong cast their
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: lot with the with the French, and then later on
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the Americans when the CIA showed up, because remember we've
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: talked about this in multiple episodes. One of the things
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: that the CIA did is they would drop behind enemy
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: lines and say, oh, you hate the people were fighting too, well,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: let's assemble a guerilla army, and the Mong fought with them. Well,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that led to big time trouble for the Mong after
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the Americans withdrew and I believe nineteen seventy five, because
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that left the Mong holding the bag. Everyone knew that
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the Mong had fought against the Communists, and the Communists
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: had just become successful in the Vietnam War, and so
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the Communists turned their um ire against the Mong people
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: who no longer had any any American backing. So as
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: they were kind of driven from their homes and um
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and and two refugee camps across the border into Thailand.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Um they were harassed by the Communist government and from that,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: from that that experience, this idea that they that something
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: was being sprayed on them kind of took root, this
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: yellow rain that was thought to be some sort of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: um biological weapon that was being deployed by the Vietnamese government.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: And Um, the Americans took it quite seriously. And got
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: their hands on some samples, and in I think nine one,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Alexander Hague, who was Secretary of State at the time, said, yep,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: it's some sort of biological weapon. We think it's tricot sin,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: which is a micro toxin, and we think that the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Soviets are supplying it in flagrant violation of anti biological
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: weapons conventions that have been around. Since you didn't do
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: your Alexander Haigue. That was my Alexander. It didn't come through.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: The whole thing was well, goodness, sorry, Al, can you
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: do one? Let's hear your well, I would I would
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: just have said something about the soil at Union like that.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: That's uh, that's Henry Kissinger. Oh you're right, yeah, Alexander,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: he didn't talk anything like that. I was totally thinking Kissinger.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. As soon as you said that, I
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: got a mental picture that went from Kissinger to Hague
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: because I totally remember Al Hague, now, yeah, for sure,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: all right, that was you know, he liked to impersonate
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Kissinger everybody, yeah, behind his back, and it wasn't very flattering,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: all right, So uh, and we're going to leave that
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: in there, even though its short stuff. I don't care.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: That was a classic s Y s K moment, my friend. So, uh,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: first of all, we should point out that this idea
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: that it would be something like that after we had
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: dropped agent orange all over the place for ten years,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you can't blame them for thinking something like that is
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: going on. However, Uh, something kind of smelled hinky in
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the nose of one. Matt Messelsson was a biologist at
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Harvard University, and he said, this doesn't really make sense
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: to me. So a couple of years later in he
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: got some samples and he said, you know what's in here.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: It's really weird. He said, there's a lot of hollowed
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: out pollen that's indigenous to this area. And this would
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: mean that the Soviet Union is taking pollen, hollowing it out,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: filling it with poison, and bringing it back and dropping
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: it down on sunny days like it's rain. It's a
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: very bad idea, it's very outlandish. It's not a very
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: effective dispersal method. And the concentration of of myco toxins
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: in there, anyway, was not really any different than samples
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of UH leaves and plants anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Right,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: like his His position was like, yes, these people are
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: being harassed, but I don't think this yellow rain is
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: actually a biological weapon being supplied by the USS are
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: that there's something else going on. It's it's like you said,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: it's just too outland ish. What that what the process
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: would require for this to to be what it was.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So he had he was a biologist, like you said,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: and he knew enough to know that bees, specifically UM
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: giant Asian honey bees that lived in the area UM
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: actually will eat pollen, but they don't eat the outer
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: shell of the pollen. They eat the protein inside the pollen.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: So when they poop, they poop out regular pollen or
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: they poop out hollowed out pollen. Okay, So he said,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I think I think this might just be a case
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: of honey bee poop. I think that's what everybody's freaked
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: out about, is it's just honey bee poop. But people
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: were saying, Okay, yeah, that's true biologically, but what you're
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: talking about for that for something that looks like yellow
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: rain to be produced would would require a mind boggling
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: number of bees to all poop at once in the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: same area. So explain that, Mr Messelson, mr. Mr Harvard
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: trained biologist. You can't, can you? And he said I
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: will right after this message break. Al Right, So Messeilson
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: takes a message break. Everyone's like, what's that, right, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: he said, I just said he's a bathroom. Oh well,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: that's normal enough, but we don't call it message breaks.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: So there was well he used scare quotes. So uh
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: so he said there's some other inconsistencies here too, because
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: you interviewed a lot of people and um, there's a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people that said that there were no planes
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: around when this stuff was raining down, which is a problem. Yeah,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: because I mean that's how you disperse biological weapons typically
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: is from a plane. So where's this you know, where's
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: the plane? How is this stuff happening if there's no plane?
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And he also said that you know all these health
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: problems that are going on, he said, it's really probably
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: just um people with dysentery and nutritional deficiencies. And you know,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: it seems like you're asking very leading questions to me.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: This whole thing really stinks at this point to Messilson, well,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: we'll also check there's one other thing there. So I
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: went back and I was reading some like an article
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: in science from the time, and they were saying like, like,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: there is indeed some sort of micro toxic poison that
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: is hurting people. And so that was a big reason
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: why this is still yet resolved because there was micro
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: toxic poisoning. Messilson's position was, well, these people are living
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: in refugee camps. It's not like they're eating top of
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the line food. I'm sure some of them are eating
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: moldy food and are suffering ill effects from it. So
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that would explain this appearance of micro toxic poisoning. And
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: in in that guy's defense, that tricot the scene is
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: supposedly was discovered in the USSR from people eating moldy food.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: That's how it was first found. Amazing. Yeah, So a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: few years later nine I'm about to graduate high school
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and Messilson teams up with some Canadian biologists to figure
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: this whole thing out, because the whole idea of like,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: why you know, you know how many bees it would
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: take to poop down yellow rain on everyone, And they said, well,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to find out just how many bees it
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: would take. Uh. They realized that it was falling on hot,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: sunny days, which is the first big clue, and they
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: measured the body mass of these bees before they left
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: their highs, then after they came back to the hives,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: and they found out that while they were gone they
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: lost of their body weight on the return flight. That
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: is a big old poop. That's a big old poop.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: So they would leave together and these big giant swarms,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: thousands of them, they would poop. They would come back
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: to care for their little larvae. And they said, this
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: is also happening most frequently on really hot sunny day,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: so we think we've kind of figured this thing out right.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: What they figured out was that the so um Asian
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: honey bees the larva as they're developing, if they overheat,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: they will deform basically, um they they will um develop incorrectly,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I guess. And so to keep the temperature in the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: hive lower, especially on hot sunny days, the hive, the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: bees in the hive will fly out and and excrete
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: waste all at once, basically or in one trip. And
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: then when they come back, since they've lost their body weight,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the temperature inside the hive is that much lower because
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: their weight is not producing that much more waste heat.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: So they actually figured out that that's what bees will do,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: at least Asian honey bees, to keep the to regulate
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the temperature in the hive so that the larva can
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: develop normally. Um, and they said, we think we just
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: solve the mystery of yellow rain. That's right. Uh more.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Research in later years pretty much confirmed this and everyone
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is basically on board, except for the fact that Kissinger
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and Alexander Haig never came back and retract of their statements.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: So officially we um, you know, I don't know if
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: that stuff matters or not, but officially we have never
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: retracted that statement as as a nation that it was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: not the Soviet Union. Um. I just got finished watching Chernobyl,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: so I gotta see it. I'm like at a fever
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: point of like the truth and toxins because the Soviet
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Union still says or I'm sorry, Russia still says thirty
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: one people died. How many people did die? Oh, they
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: don't know, anywhere between four thousand and ninety thousand, depending
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: on how you count. You know, cancer twenty years later
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Should we do? I was talking
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: to a friend, Blair Um, who is a friend of
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: both of ours, a photographer, and he was like, you
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: gotta do one on Chernoba, And I'm like, everybody knows
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: about it, now, should we do one? Maybe? Okay, because
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I'd love to. It's a fascinating topic, But if everybody
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: already knows about it, it's like, what's the point. It's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: a it was a heck of a show. I'll say that,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: all right, Well I'll at least watch that, all right.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: So to finish here, though the Mong, for their part,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: things haven't gotten a lot better. They continue to suffer
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to this day. Um. Very small amount of them made
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it over to the United States. Uh. Some people returned
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: to Laos, some people returned to Vietnam. Uh. Like we
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: said at the beginning, a lot of them were going
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: to Thailand as refugees. But in two thousand nine the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Thai government shut that down and sent away thousands and
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: thousands of the Mong. And Uh, it's really just sort
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: of a sad situation. But as this article points out,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: the one silver lining is that, like this whole thing,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: anytime there's a new theory about what happened, or anytime
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: it makes the news, the Mong also make the news, right,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: which I think is really worth pointing out. For sure,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: this this uh. One of the articles we used for
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: this was um called the Mystery of Yellow Rain. It
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: was written by Jacob Roberts for Distillations, which is a
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: blog of the Science History Institute. Very good stuff. All right,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Well that's it for short stuff see later. M H.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heeart
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. M hm h